100-Pounder Taken

Manuel Pariente recently shot a 100-pounder in Botswana with Johan Calitz Safaris, guided by professional hunter Willy McDonald. The big elephant’s tusks weighed 104 and 99 pounds making him the biggest tusker to be taken in Botswana since elephant hunting reopened there in 1992.

In the same week in early April, another hunter with Johan Calitz Safaris dropped a 90 pounder with its opposite tusk broken off at “only” 77 pounds. That’s two of the biggest jumbo ever to be killed in Botswana and serves as yet another marker that Johan Calitz is operating in the very best areas of Botswana for elephant.

The greatest trophy in the world, not just Africa, is a 100 pound elephant, in my opinion. To give you some idea of their scarcity, even in the “champagne era” of safari hunting in the 1920s, the future king of England, then the Price of Wales, failed to shoot a 100 pounder. (He stepped on a twig on the final stalk and spooked a potential 100 pounder, never to be seen again.)

Robert Ruark took a 110 pounder in the Northern Frontier District of Kenya in the 1950s, but the NFD still held a lot of big tuskers in those days.

Even in Ruark’s day, 100 pounders were rare, but today they’re shot once every few years. A Russian client shot a 100-pounder in 2009 in Zimbabwe along the border of Botswana.

Congratulations to Manuel Pariente and Willy McDonald, and of course Johan Calitz, the dean of elephant outfitters.